“I never imagined that at this age I would have to go to dialysis three times a week. It’s frightening.
For 10 years I proudly served in the U.S. Marine Corps and Reserves. My dream was to retire at 65 and travel by horse from Washington State to California. But now I can hardly get on a horse.
My clinic is not properly staffed. If you’ve got only one technician there and he’s looking at nine other patients, it’s dangerous. They are making billions of dollars, there’s no reason they can’t properly staff the facility. Something is out of whack here…
Thanks to my military service, I occasionally get dialysis treatment at the Veterans Administration. The difference is like night and day. At the VA, a tech stays by my bed throughout my entire treatment, and after treatment a tech holds my access point as long as it takes for the bleeding to stop.
As dialysis patients, these factors could be the difference between life and death. I know exactly what safe dialysis care looks like. I feel safe when I go to the VA. But I don’t feel that same trust and safety with my regular dialysis clinic, and that needs to change.